Communities Fight Back Against Marine Debris

Richmond City Council Passes Gutsy Food Ware Ordinance

By Linda Hunter

Styrofoam, be gone! On Tuesday, October 20th, The Richmond City Council voted 6-1 to pursue an ordinance requiring food providers to use only biodegradable or compostable food ware. Richmond now joins a growing list of municipalities that have banned polystyrene in the Bay Area including Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Fairfax, Hercules, Millbrae, Oakland, Palo Alto, Pittsburg, San Bruno, San Francisco, San Mateo County, Santa Cruz County, Sonoma County and South San Francisco.

A similar statewide ban had been introduced earlier this year but was pulled by its sponsor, Rep. Jerry Hill, because of concerns about the proposal's impact on California's sluggish economy. The American Chemistry Council spent millions of dollars to defeat the bill, most likely to protect its profit margins from the sale of plastic bags and polystyrene containers. Fittingly, the council never mentioned the high costs of removing trash from our creeks and shorelines. It's heartening to see the Richmond City Council leadership reject the exhortations of the plastic industry lobbyists and make a stand for a cleaner environment.

What's so bad about polystyrene?
Polystyrene food packaging is a serious and easily preventable source of marine debris. It's lightweight, aerodynamic, and is blown easily into gutters and storm drains, even when "properly" disposed of. Polystyrene is very brittle. When littered, it quickly breaks into small pieces, making cleanup nearly impossible. It's also ubiquitous in our environment. To give you some idea: 377,579 tons of polystyrene are produced in California alone, including 154,808 tons of food service packaging! That's 154,808 tons of over-processed plastics designed to head straight to the landfill after a use time of just a few minutes-- the time it takes you to drink your coffee and toss the cup.

Once in marine environments, polystyrene regularly kills marine wildlife. Because it breaks down into tiny pieces that resemble fish eggs, larger fish species consume it and suffer the consequences. Additionally, polystyrene food packaging contributes disproportionably to oceanic plastic pollution. Over 80% of this plastic pollution comes from urban litter. In the most affected areas of the Pacific Ocean there are over forty times more plastic than plankton.

Although the plastic industry has attempted to reprocess polystyrene (at a cost of thousands of dollars per ton), no food packaging made of polystyrene is recycled anywhere in California. Most curbside recycling programs in California do not accept any polystyrene plastic resin because it contaminates recycling and too easily becomes litter during transportation. Clean up of that litter costs billions and doesn't work. Reducing the amount of plastic litter before it enters our waterways has never been more important.

Health Hazards of Polystyrene
What's more, toxicology studies show that styrene, a possible carcinogen and endocrine disruptor, migrates out of polystyrene into food and drink. The rate of migration is dependent upon temperature and fat content but it takes as little as ten minutes of exposure to see movement. A 1986 study by the Environmental Protection Agency detected the polystyrene foam in the fat tissue of every man, woman and child tested. Regardless of its environmental impact, this product should not come in contact with food. Despite the claims of polystyrene's cleanliness and effectiveness in keeping beverages hot, polystyrene is downright dangerous!

Sometimes the best strategy for effecting change is to work from the bottom up. Richmond's gutsy action shows that cities and concerned citizens can make a difference.